


Passiontide

by praiseofshadows



Series: that arthurian series I'm not writing [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 05:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2416637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/praiseofshadows/pseuds/praiseofshadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Galahad arrives on the eve of Passiontide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passiontide

Percival is dead, that much has been gotten out of Bors' ramblings, though it was unclear what has killed him. Mordred presumes thirst, at the end, but Bors is beyond any sort of questioning.

And Galahad.

Galahad has e'er been blond, tan, and hale. Now he is sickly, sallow, little more than skin stretched tight over brittle bones. He has yet to come out of his swoon, though he cries out of blood, of stigmatas, of all things foolish and holy. Lancelot, ne'er caring of his son while he lived, fusses over him now as he lays dying, pottering about with holy men and barbers and relics.

Mordred commanders the sick-room, consciously aping Arthur at his most imperial, and hastens the charlatans' departures. He tells the great du Lac himself to go to the devil, and Lancelot aways, presumably to the queen and the comfort of her skirts as he rages at the temerity of the king's bastard. Guinevere herself comes (though only the once) to see her lover's child.

"I have offered a great many masses," she says, as if priests praying for Galahad's soul can somehow make up for her great, seething jealousy at the _idea_ of Galahad. 

There is a delicate pause as she waits for Mordred to make his thanks, but he does not for what good are her masses to him? The moment silence stretches on, too long, and she eventually says, “I had not known you were friends.”

She already speaks of Galahad in the past tense, and Mordred, who has never had time for this pampered, vindictive shrew, hates with a ferocity he did not believe himself capable.

"We are not," Mordred says. "But someone must see this farce through."

It's not precisely a lie. Nor is it the truth, but it is all he will tell Guinevere.

She leaves with a studied elegance. Mordred reads aloud from the psalters, though he is sure Galahad is too far out of his mind to hear.

#

When Galahad arrives on the eve of Passiontide, ragged and gaunt, more spectral than man, Arthur is not surprised that Mordred offers up his place at Arthur's right-hand and spends the rest of the evening in dancing attendance, as if he were still a page boy and not a knight.

Mordred has perhaps always been far too in love with the Siege Perilous. As a child, first come to court, he'd stared at, wide-eyed. He'd even overcome his fear of Merlin to ask questions about it. After he'd been knighted, he'd chosen the seat directly to its right which had endeared him to no one. Not that he'd ever sat in it, to Arthur's knowledge, but he'd touched it whenever he could, leaning over the back of it instead of sitting in his own seat during council. This habit did not stop upon Galahad's arrival; on the contrary, Mordred merely transferred his strange infatuation with the seat to Galahad himself.

But perhaps it was not so strange for a boy that no one loved to fall in love with certain death.

Arthur tries to love him, his strange, quicksilver son.

But it is hard, hard to see Mordred as something separate and apart from Morgause. Mordred's inherited the theatrical gestures of her hands, the sultry swing of her hips. Looking at Mordred, Arthur cannot help but recall those wicked nights spent in her bed. And memory is e'er a tricky thing, and in Arthur's dreams, it is Mordred's face which overlays Morgause's own.

Galahad is dozing. Mordred reads aloud from Galahad's beloved psalter, his latin so continental it rivals that of the Bishop of London. But then Morgause spared no expense for her boys, especially the youngest. Raising the other four to be kings but the last to be _high_ king.

“Sire,” Mordred says. He doesn't look up from his reading, and that is just another way he is like Morgause. Witch-child they called him when he first came to court. Witch-child they call him still. If Arthur had not knighted Mordred almost a full decade before Galahad came to court, he would swear the two were of an age.

Galahad the Pure, they call him, for he foreswears women for his holy quest. Would that he similarly forswear Mordred. But no, alas, Mordred has him on bended knee, like a knight to his lady fair.

(Though Mordred is a fellow knight.)

#

Galahad's fever breaks on the third day, and he lies, listless, as Mordred reads aloud the Canticle of Ezechias. Galahad remembers a time, not so very long ago, when Mordred read aloud chiefly for the purpose of making Galahad blush. Ovid had been a particular favourite, despite Galahad's pleas for Mordred to put his voice to use in the service of God. 

There is a tightness in Galahad's breast, and he would cry, great gulping sobs as he did when the glory of Christ left him at Corbenic, if it weren't for the fact that Mordred sounds so very _happy_.

Galahad has never, throughout the years, known Mordred to be happy. Gleeful yes, content, yes, but happy: it is a foreign thing. 

He looks at Mordred, but Mordred is e'er constant: a softer, prettier Arthur, with a lush, cupid's-bow of a mouth inherited from his mother and long, dark lashes that make all the maidens envious. 

“I dreamt of this,” he says, and Mordred lifts his head from Galahad's well-worn psalter, his changeling eyes – such a vivid, vicious green – looking almost black in the torchlight. And he _had_ , or rather, he had dreamt of lying safe in his own bed, Mordred's slight weight beside him and Mordred reading some Roman vulgarity.

Mordred laughs, so soft and quiet and, again, so unlike Mordred, “Did you indeed, sir knight,” he says. He looks around, meaningfully, allowing Galahad to consider this small cell, bare of everything but Galahad's cot and Mordred's chair. It is nothing like Galahad's own room with its tapestries and images of the cross. “A rather poor dream, I think.”

“Mordred – “

“The servants are all but waiting for the angels to assume you up to heaven,” Mordred says, as if confiding a great secret. “Though I would entreat you to stay with us sinners for a time.”

And how can Mordred, clever, clever Mordred with his sharp eyes and even sharper tongue, not _see_. “Mordred,” Galahad says, “You must realise I only stayed for you.”


End file.
